Commercial v. Traditional: We Need A Gripping Hand

Howard Tayler (of Schlock Mercenary fame) published a brief article on his site where he attempts to describe what he sees as the intersection of various pieces of the publishing world. This is interesting in itself, but not the topic of this article. The topic of this article is a little aside placed at the bottom of his article:

(*Note: I say “commercial publishing” where the vanity presses would have you say “traditional publishing.” The latter is a term a vanity press coined to legitimize itself by slighting the organizations who pay their authors instead having their authors pay them. But that’s a separate discussion.)

The link goes to a blog called Writer Beware!, one of a number of extremely useful sites that point out the many pitfalls starting authors (and sometimes even experienced authors) will stumble into and occasionally not be able to extract themselves from.

It’s a good blog, a useful blog, and as far as I can tell what it’s talking about in the above link isn’t wrong. Not in the slightest. However, I do think that, despite it being absolutely correct in what it’s describing (predatory faux-publishing houses trying to legitimise themselves by rebranding themselves and changing terminology in order to weasel their way out of their bad reputations) it doesn’t account for the Other Thing.

The Other Thing is legitimate self-publishing. It doesn’t account for it, because it is not, at present, terribly successful, and the commercial publishers are still your best bet to get paid, probably by a long shot. But the Other Thing is there, and dismissing it out of hand as being too small to consider is, I think, a poor tactical decision.

I do have a specific bias, and it’s worth mentioning: I’m in the middle of experimenting with the Other Thing as I publish a novel online. I am not following any kind of business model as a I do this, at least at present, and can’t authoritatively speak for those who are. Still, it’s not like I don’t have a horse in this race, and I ought to be honest about that. So, for the record: I am involved in self-publishing, and I would like to see it succeed.¹

One thing to keep in mind is that this tension between big companies and individuals self-publishing is not new–not in the slightest–and we already have at least three examples of the Internet affecting that relationship.

Once upon a time the “commercial publishers” were record companies. The internet gave independent bands a way to self-publish and get their music directly to the masses. They grew so large that for a while they bought up and killed off most of the indie record labels and created a commercial music genre known as “Alternative.”²

Enter Internet. In the late 90s indie bands would post free music on sites like mp3.com, by passing labels directly. These days unknown bands can post music videos directly to sites like YouTube and pick up fans in ways they never could before.

Commercial publishers in the music world still have an enormous advantage overall, but that advantage comes from looking at the sum of all bands signed to a label, not looking at each individual band. Most bands signed to a label make little to no actual money. This isn’t terribly different than the self-publishing, self-promotion route, except that the self-publishing, self-promotion route allows you to continue to own all rights to your music.

Once upon a time, the “commercial publishers” were cartoon syndicates. When webcomics first started to attract notice, it was dismissed out of hand as the work of dreamers and amateurs³ who would never be able to find a way to prosper. Today sites like PvP, Penny Arcade, Schlock Mercenary, Devil’s Panties, and others are proof that it is possible, though obviously not guaranteed, to make a living wage off web comics.

And now in the world of writing, the “commercial publishers” are companies like Baen Books, Tor, Random House, Ace, etc. And there are writers who are considering using the Internet, and self-publishing companies (like Lulu), and e-book formats, to try to bypass those publishers and get their books out directly. It is essentially a repeat of the same dynamic.

And the dynamic is startlingly similar. Consider the following:

1. The “commercial publishers” are not necessarily evil.

Well, the record companies are.

Still, cartoon syndicates and book publishers? Not so much. They’re trying to make money, and their size means that they have to meet certain margins to do so. This means that they have to have an eye on those margins and determine what will sell in order to decide what they are willing to pay… and because they are a business, they will try to get the most out of their investment. Many of these attitudes can feel evil from the perspective on an artist, but they aren’t. They’re just business-oriented.

2. In the nascent “indie” movement, the predatory companies coincide with or predate the legitimate efforts.

In the music scene, before indie artists started making their music available online, the popular thing to do was to trade mp3s that were ripped off CDs. This is what the RIAA likes to fixate on – “digital piracy” – and you will still, even today, find flamewars on the internet where people are arguing over the moral legitimacy of it. Further, you will find no end of “music distribution sites” that allow would-be artists to distribute their music but insert terms and clauses into the artist’s agreement that give them liberties no sane musician would willingly allow, if they actually understood those terms. In fact, MP3.com, at one point the banner-waving, revolution-leading leader of the online indie music distribution revolution (before they went public, sold out, got sued, got bought, and went away) had an artists agreement that allowed them to use any of the music hosted on their site for “promotional purposes” without compensating the artists in any way. And you’ll find plenty of musicians who can tell you that “promotional purposes” is, in the music industry, occasionally a code word for “how companies make money without paying the artist.”

In the world of webcomics, before Keenspot started up, there were a ton of “we will host and publish your webcomic for free” sites. None of them were particularly well-known, but I ran into them over and over and over again, and they all had pretty much the same terms: we will publish your webcomic for free, and in doing so you give us the right to use that webcomic for “promotional purposes.” Sound familiar?

3. The indie publishing markets are not yet proven to be successful.

Some bands have made a good living going the self-publishing route, some did so even before the internet. There are more, now, but the success rate percentages can’t be called “encouraging.” Similiarly, there are some well-known success stories in the webcomics world, but also a lot of other examples of people who either barely break even or operate at a loss.⁴ There is not only no guarantee for success but there really isn’t much of a roadmap for it either… just some artists who act as an example of What Could Potentially Be. Likewise, in the publishing world you have some authors who are experimenting with a number of things that the commercial publishers wouldn’t consider for a second… the best example of this is Cory Doctorow, who makes all his books available for free as ebooks, yet still somehow manages to earn a living off it. But… Cory Doctorow is one guy. There’s no guarantee that every author who makes his or her writing available for free will ever make any money.

In other words: everything about this “new way” is untested, unproven, fraught with peril, and the people who engage in it are either risk-takers, dreamers, or both. There are some success stories, but the numbers aren’t exactly what you’d call “good.” The most conservative, cautious, business-plan-oriented webcomic artist is a wild-eyed risk-taker compared to people doing things the way “it’s always been done.”

Which is what makes the predators so dangerous… they know this, they take advantage of it, and they suck people in by saying things that aren’t necessarily untrue, by twisting, folding, spindling and distorting the meaning behind the phrase.

So in the world of writing there are vanity press sites that pretend to be what they aren’t – legitimate publishers who prey on the hopes and dreams of authors, trying to suck them into “distribution agreements” that are just ways for these predatory organizations to make money, usually by forcing the writer to pay them, over and over again, without doing a damn thing. They are legitimately worthless bastards⁵ and the hue and cry must be raised about them because they swindle people who really don’t deserve it. And the legitimate publishers have every right to object to being defined by the swindlers.

That said, there are people who are legitimately exploring other ways to get their content out there. Many, perhaps even most, will fail utterly. But they do not belong in the same category of Baen Books, Ace, Random House, etc., nor do they deserve to be cast in the same light as PublishAmerica and their ilk⁶. Even at their most successful, they may never reach more than a fraction of the success that a writer publishing through the big publishers could attain. But they are legitimate – unproven, yes. Doomed to miserable failure, possibly. But they aren’t misrepresenting what they do. And there are also businesses and resources that have made themselves available for these literary entrepreneurs – self-publishing and print on demand services that specifically don’t promise to make you rich, or even get you a living wage… but provide services that allow you to provide, at a reasonable quality, some kind of product based on your work.

So we find ourselves in the midst of a rhetorical dilemma: to use the term “traditional publisher” is to lend credibility to the predatory vanity presses… credibility they in no way deserve. However, to use the term “commercial publisher” is to imply that the book publishers are the only group where the term “commercial” can legitimately apply. Certainly at the moment that may appear to be mostly true… but seeing what I have seen, in both the world of music and the world of webcomics, I believe it would be folly to cede the battlefield so early.

So what’s to be done? Labels are very useful for referring, in shorthand form, to more complicated ideas. The label “traditional publisher” would actually be a very accurate term to use to describe the book publishing houses if it were used neutrally, without the overt propaganda of the predators, but it’s too late for that: the term was apparently subverted before it had a chance to find legitimate use. The label “commercial publisher” does, at present, seem to fit more solidly with reputable publishing houses because the word “commercial” implies “volume, volume, volume” which is something a reputable publishing house has the resources to do, that this new group really doesn’t.⁷ But as I’ve already mentioned, calling them “commercial” automatically implies that any other activity is “non-commercial,” and so the self-publishing movement is forced to find another descriptive term.

What we need, to borrow from Pournelle,⁸ is a gripping hand: a “third way” of thinking about the division of services that takes into account people trying to do the Other Thing. What it should be, and what it should encompass… I haven’t a clue. “Web publishing” is much too specific. “Self publishing” may be too broad, and has the added disadvantage of carrying the same rhetorical taint that “Traditional publishing” has, albeit perhaps drifting in the other direction. And of course before we can actually settle on a workable term there will be the mandatory arguments over whether it’s necessary, whether this is a huge waste of time, and whether this post, and others like it, are secretly astroturf propaganda efforts funded by the predatory publishing tar pits that seek to legitimise their cons.

I predict a useful answer to this problem roughly twelve years after the matter has already been settled. The Internet is funny like that.

1. Just as I am involved in webcomics, and would like to see that succeed as well.
2. There were still indie labels. Just not nearly as many.
3. like me
4. That would be me, kids.
5. Sorry, Larry.
6. Now that I’ve actually named the devil, how long until he appears?
7. In the print world, at any rate. E-books may someday make that irrelevant… but not today.
8. Why do I get the feeling Pournelle will not be particularly happy that I’m borrowing from him in this context?